The Women's Cricket World Cup final between England and India at Lord's on Sunday was watched by a record 1.1 million people in the U.K. on Sky Sports -- the "highest viewing figures" in the country for any women's cricket match and a "larger audience than a Premier League match attracts on average," according to Elizabeth Ammon of the LONDON TIMES. The figure is 400,000 more than for the Int'l Cricket Council Champions Trophy final between India and Pakistan last month, which had an average audience of 612,000, and "three times that of the final day of the Lord's Test match between England and South Africa this month," which peaked at 370,000. Premier League matches "can peak at about 3.5 million but the average over the season is just under a million." The global TV audience for the final, which was "substantially boosted by the presence of India, is likely to make it the most-watched women's cricket match ever." Official viewing figures will not be released by the ICC until later this week, but early estimates are that they are "comfortably in excess of 150 million viewers" (LONDON TIMES, 7/25).
